What James Brady did for gun control

By Daniel Webster

updated 4:03 PM EDT, Tue August 5, 2014

James Brady, a former White House press secretary who became a prominent gun-control advocate after he was wounded in the 1981 attempt on President Ronald Reagan's life, died Monday, August 4. He was 73.

Reagan introduces Brady as his press secretary on January 6, 1981, in Washington.

Police and Secret Service agents react during the Reagan assassination attempt, which took place March 30, 1981, after a conference outside the Hilton Hotel in Washington. Lying on the ground in front is wounded police officer Thomas Delahanty. Brady is behind him, also lying face down.

Brady is placed into an ambulance shortly after being shot. He suffered a head wound and was left partially paralyzed.

Maryland Attorney General Joseph Curran reaches to shake Brady's hand outside the U.S. Supreme Court in October 1981. After leaving the White House, Brady launched the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which pushes for stricter firearms laws.

Brady, with his left hand in a sling, chats with his son, Scott, in November 1981. Because of the shooting, Brady had to use a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

Brady is next to President Bill Clinton as Clinton signs the Brady Bill on November 30, 1993. The bill, which was fiercely fought over for years before Congress approved it, required background checks for gun purchases.

Brady gives a thumbs-up to Clinton at the White House on September 9, 1996. Brady was receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.

Clinton congratulates Brady in February 2000, when the White House press briefing room was named in his honor.

Brady visits the White House Briefing Room with his wife, Sarah, as White House Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton, left, shows them around in June 2009.

Brady, alongside his wife and Brady Campaign President Paul Helmke, speaks in March 2011 about new legislation curbing gun violence.

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Gun-control advocate James Brady

Gun-control advocate James Brady

Gun-control advocate James Brady

Gun-control advocate James Brady

Gun-control advocate James Brady

Gun-control advocate James Brady

Gun-control advocate James Brady

Gun-control advocate James Brady

Gun-control advocate James Brady

Gun-control advocate James Brady

Gun-control advocate James Brady

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STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Daniel Webster: In 1981, when James Brady was shot, buying guns relied on "honor system"

He says you only had to sign form saying law didn't prohibit you from owning firearms

Brady Law helped fulfill goal of Gun Control Act, to keep guns from dangerous people, he says

Webster: Its effect on public safety unclear, but background checks help

Editor's note: Daniel Webster is director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research and professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

(CNN) -- In 1981, James Brady was shot in the head and gravely wounded in a shooting that also wounded President Reagan -- despite their both being surrounded by plenty of extremely well-trained "good guys with guns." At that time, federal law set conditions, such as a felony conviction or being involuntarily hospitalized for a mental illness, that prohibited a person from possessing firearms.

The 1968 Gun Control Act had established record-keeping requirements and regulated interstate transactions of firearms, but there was no federal law requiring proof from a prospective buyer that he or she was not prohibited from possessing firearms.

Daniel W. Webster

It was, in essence, an honor system. You could purchase as many firearms and as much ammunition as you liked, as long as you signed a form stating that you didn't meet any of the disqualifying conditions.

While James Brady started his long road to recovery from his brain injuries, he and his wife, Sarah, began what has been a three-decade endeavor to strengthen America's gun laws and prevent others from becoming victims of gun violence. The Bradys and the organization they have helped lead have been successful in:

--Expanding disqualifiers for firearm possession to include perpetrators of domestic violence

--Litigating legal cases to protect the public from unsafe business practices in the gun industry

--Educating the public about how to protect children from being shot

But Brady's best-known legacy will be the federal law he championed and that bears his name, the Brady Gun Violence Prevention Act.

The Brady Act was a huge leap forward toward fulfilling the objectives of the Gun Control Act of 1968: keeping guns from dangerous people. It required licensed gun dealers to submit information on the identity of prospective gun buyers to the FBI, which could then determine through searches of databases of criminal records whether the purchaser was prohibited.

Through this law, millions of prohibited buyers have been identified and prohibited from purchasing firearms from licensed dealers.

What impact the Brady Law has had on public safety is debatable and, in my opinion, very difficult to assess. Because some states had background check requirements in place before the Brady Law, one way to estimate the policy's effects is to contrast changes in homicide trends in these states at the time the law was implemented with changes over the same period in states newly implementing background checks for sales by licensed gun dealers.

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The legacy of James Brady

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But the accuracy of the estimates depends on having states that are similar except for the policy change or having states with similar crime trends before the law was implemented. If the pre-law trends differ between those sets of states, you must control for those differences. Those conditions haven't been met in studies of the Brady Law.

But I believe the Brady Law is the foundation upon which we should build a complete system for vetting all firearms transactions to keep guns away from people identified by laws as being too dangerous to possess them. Some consider background checks for all gun sales a pipe dream, based on the flawed logic that gun laws won't work when criminals don't obey them. This argument ignores the important linkages between legal and illegal gun markets and what research has shown about the ability of sensible regulations to prevent diversions of guns into the illegal market.

We can't directly observe a homicide prevented because of background checks, but we can see what happens in their absence. After Missouri repealed its system for vetting all handgun sales through a permit to purchase background check system in 2007, firearm homicide rates increased sharply while rates declined nationally and in states surrounding Missouri.

A study that I conducted to assess the effects of this policy change controlled for a host of other factors that might explain Missouri's spike in gun homicides and determined that Missouri's repealed handgun purchase permit law was associated with nearly 50 additional homicides per year.

The last 33 years of James Brady's life were marked by courage and perseverance, not only to regain what gun violence had taken from him, but to curb the nation's extraordinary high level of gun violence. He has been an inspiration to many who are committed to completing what he started, so we can have far more effective policies for keeping guns from dangerous people.

If his vision of a comprehensive background check system is realized, we will have many fewer lives lost and damaged by gun violence.